Lonnie T. Brown, Jr. is the Kean Family Dean and Peter J. Liacouras Professor of Law. He joined Temple Law as dean in the fall of 2026, after spending four years as the dean of the University of Tennessee Winston College of Law, where he also held appointments as the Elvin E. Overton Distinguished Professor of Law and the Haslam Family Professor. Before that Dean Brown spent 20 years at the University of Georgia School of Law where he was the A. Gus Cleveland Distinguished Chair of Legal Ethics and Professionalism and Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor, the university’s highest honor for teaching excellence. From 2013 to 2015, he served as Georgia Law’s associate dean for academic affairs.
Dean Brown’s scholarship and teaching focus on lawyering, legal ethics, and judicial ethics. He is the author of the definitive biography of former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark—Defending the Public’s Enemy: The Life and Legacy of Ramsey Clark (Stanford University Press)—and co-author of Professional Responsibility: A Contemporary Approach (West Academic, 6th ed. 2026).
Earlier in his career, Dean Brown was an assistant professor at the University of Illinois College of Law and served as a visiting assistant professor at Vanderbilt University. In addition, he taught at Emory University as an adjunct professor. Before entering academia, he served as a judicial clerk for Judge William C. O’Kelley of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia and then practiced law as an associate and a partner at Alston & Bird LLP in Atlanta, Georgia.
Dean Brown is an elected member of the American Law Institute, a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and a former member of the Board of Trustees for the American Inns of Court. He has also served on the Drafting Committee for the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam (MPRE) and has been a member of the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, a body responsible for issuing formal opinions interpreting the ABA’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct and Model Code of Judicial Conduct. In addition, Dean Brown served on the State Bar of Georgia’s Formal Advisory Opinion Board and is a longstanding member of the ABA’s Center for Professional Responsibility and the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers.
A dedicated teacher, Dean Brown has received numerous teaching awards throughout his career. He was the inaugural recipient of Georgia Law’s C. Ronald Ellington Award for Excellence in Teaching and received the Student Bar Association’s Professionalism Award on fifteen separate occasions. In addition, he was selected five times to serve as an honorary faculty marshal at commencement by graduating classes. At the university level, Dean Brown served as an Administrative Fellow in the Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost, a Senior Teaching Fellow, and a member of UGA’s Teaching Academy.
He earned his bachelor’s degree from Emory University, where he was a Robert W. Woodruff Scholar, student body president, and recipient of the Marion Luther Brittain Award, Emory’s highest student honor. He obtained his law degree from Vanderbilt Law School, where he was a Patrick Wilson Scholar and editor-in-chief of the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law.